Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @08:17AM
from the get-over-it dept.

bonch writes "In a surprising statement to CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' This will only fuel concerns about Google's behavior as it becomes an ever more powerful gatekeeper of information; though Google says it is aware of these concerns and has taken steps to be transparent to users about the information that is stored."

I don't get Google fanboyism. I really don't. Every time something like this happens, we get some idiots who are in love with Google the way geeks loved Microsoft in the early days when they were the little guys taking down Big Nasty IBM making up some absurd reason why what they are doing is just fine and that Google couldn't *possibly* do anything wrong, because, after all, their corporate slogan proves it.

Google hasn't been a friendly garage company for years now, they are a Big Nasty Megacorp looking to squeeze every ounce of value from us they can, and their method of doing that is even more invasive than Microsoft's.

There have been maybe ten stories about Google becoming "the evil empire" in the last week or so. It seems to be a running theme right now.

Still, Google keeps introducing interesting new technologies based on open standards, open sourcing them, and making data export easy (just look at the new "dowload all" button on GDocs)[1 [dataliberation.org]]. Heck, Wave is open source and federated. This doesn't even begin to cover the help they give FOSS through GSoC.

Once Google stops being open and starts trying to lock me into their se

"Nice" and "evil" are not mutually exclusive. Google can very well donate lots of code to OSS project and rape our privacy at the same time. And, quite serious, what Schmidt said there is virtually equivalent to "only criminals need privacy".

I oppose blanket surveillance, whether by a government or by a corporation. If Google is of the opinion that I shouldn't have a right to privacy then Google is evil. Simple as that.

"Once Google stops being open and starts trying to lock me into their services, then I'll be worried"

We hear this all the time. By that logic, Microsoft doesn't force you to use Windows, therefore they are not evil.

Google's money that they pay into GSoC pales in comparison to their revenue. It wouldn't even be a rounding error. Furthermore, it's a tax break (they set up a charitable fund for this purpose) and the money put into it is considered marketing expenses. It's not altruism, it's just creative marketing.

Google's whole strategy is setting up a Google-centric infrastructure that you depend on for email, social networking, business interaction and just about everything else. They want to *be* your Internet, and they are spending enormous amounts of cash building themselves to be your One Unified Service.

Ensuring that geeks love them by giving candy to the FOSS movement and acting all David-y to Microsoft's Goliath is necessary for that strategy. It's got *nothing* to do with philanthropy, and you're naive if you don't see it. Google is a company, and company's don't give away free things. TANSTAAFL. When will you learn?

Google's money that they pay into GSoC pales in comparison to their revenue. It wouldn't even be a rounding error. Furthermore, it's a tax break (they set up a charitable fund for this purpose) and the money put into it is considered marketing expenses. It's not altruism, it's just creative marketing.

Any kind of altruism, unless truly anonymous, is marketing, or egoism (or both).

People keep screaming "evil," but I'm just not seeing it. They're being "nicer" than any other multi-billion corp I can name.

You don't even see it after this direct quote from the CEO? He's effectively saying that privacy is immoral, and private people are shameful.

Sure Google occasionally releases open code, but code is a means to an end, and on the web that end is for the common man to publish anything he wishes. What's the point of open code if you have to use it the way Google mandates?

It reminds me of an old Peanuts comic I once read. Lucy is running a root beer stand with a sign that says "all you can drink for $1". Charlie Brown walks up to her stand and gives her a dollar, and Lucy gives him a tiny cup of root beer. When Charlie Brown inquires about the sign Lucy tells him "It's not false advertising - that's all you can drink for $1".

I've always expected privacy on the internet. The same way I expect privacy in my car while driving to work.

Sure, random people can see me dancing to a song, shaving, eating and talking on the cell while driving with one knee, but particular people can't and there is no record of it. Google (well EVERYONE-- the government and every company) wants to put a camera in my car now, actually- a camera on me-- any time I'm out in public, everything I do recorded since i have no right to privacy in public, right?

Hell no- we expect privacy of a certain kind in public as well. We expect privacy from surveillance without cause. We expect our actions will not be permanently recorded.

There may not have been the expectation of privacy, but there has been the expectation of anonymity, a very close cousin. "On the internet nobody knows if you're a dog." was the famous cartoon that summarized this. (Yeah, it also had other meanings. But that was one of them.)

Well, anonymity is pretty much gone, so now privacy has become quite important...and I don't care about how it used to be. Either one works, but you've got to have at least one of them.

The main difference between Google and Facebook is that on one platform, you knowingly signed up and put data about yourself up for grabs. Google on the other hand is actively mining data from wherever it can, meaning it may connect some dots you rather not have liked to be publicly viewable.

Nobody is perfect and well-mannered all the time and some have hobbies and private ummm interests that they would share with like-minded individuals but not in Hell with the general public.

There's a ton of semi-personal information pieces that I can imagine their owners would never like to have it searchable, aggregated and accessible for Anon and everyone. Imagine the following tidbits (not from me or necessary and single individual, just as an example)

- being a member of a right wing party- being a member of a left wing party- being a member of a local chapter of the Ex-Muslims- being a member of the local chapter of the Sunni or Shiite or Alevite Muslims- being an author of Mohammed cartoons- having voiced an opinion pro or contra abortions- being gay, lesbian, transgendered- not living a gay lifestyle but not minding the occasional meet with a man- having recently won the lottery- living with a serious disease- having a married affair- running for public office

All these personal habits, beliefs or lifestyles are perfectly legal and should raise no issues in a state of democracy and rule of law. But some people choose not accept that and will surely pester them with threats. violence or even assassination attempts.

That is what privacy is for: ensure that all law-abiding people are safe even IF someone chooses to ignore basic human rights by pressing their own way of life by violence and threats. Without privacy, democracy cannot live because it is squashed by silent but effective mob rule against 'dissidents' or some who don't conform to a certain ideal.

Face it: YOU (and that means everyone who can read this) regularly do SOMETHING that SOMEONE hates like hell and thinks it should be punished by violence or death. No matter if it is porn, pork, alcohol, tobacco, adultery, active religious life or whatever - Without anonymity, people would be a whole less free because they'd have to fear repercussions from everything they do - or did, thirty years ago while drunk in college, because Google never forgets anything.

I will accept that I have occasionally verged onto Google fandom, and that it can somewhat blind me to the dangers that Google can present. But I can explain why it has such appeal for many of us:

1. A deeply intellectual corporate cultural, with 70% of its workforce having PhDs (I don't know if this is still true.) This includes the "20%" concept, whereby all Google staff is given free-reign to research what interests them 1 day out of 5. Google, to me, recalls the days of business-as-research-endeavor, the era of Xerox Parc and Bell Labs and the intellectual energy they represented.

2. A friendliness to open source unmatched by any other major company.

3. A very open ecosystem, with freely available APIs. And, an absence of pretense that the ecosystem is closed or finished. I rather like that Google is in "perpetual beta" (though it can get frustrating, especially when they abandon a project.)

4. Lots of free stuff to play with. Unlike Apple, you don't need to be a well-heeled consumer to play pretty much in all parts of the Google "playground."

5. The sense that they are moving the functions of the library into the 21st century.

Nonetheless, you are right. They are gatekeepers for much of the world's information at this point. We need to be more skeptical and hold Google accountable for the considerable power they now possess.

I'm very happy that Google is one of the most open source friendly, but most of their major open source work is relatively recent. Sketchup, Picasa, and Google Earth are all applications that would have gained serious traction had Google opened up the code and let volunteers port them to different platforms and improve the code. They are also the biggest single user of the Linux kernel but have contributed very little back to the mainline tree. (Admittedly, they actually want to now, but Google's kernel bears little resemblance to the mainline kernel at this point, so it's not really practical on a technical level. But it would have been a lot easier if they contributed their changes from the start.)

1. A deeply intellectual corporate cultural, with 70% of its workforce having PhDs (I don't know if this is still true.)

Pretty sure it's not. Google's business is advertising and almost all of their branch offices scattered around the world are filled with staff that support mainly that aspect of their business.

This includes the "20%" concept, whereby all Google staff is given free-reign to research what interests them 1 day out of 5.

Last I heard, "20% time" applied only to their engineers, the PhD types. And they're not given free reign, the projects have to have merit and get approved. The project has to have the potential to benefit the company somehow, even if indirectly.

5. The sense that they are moving the functions of the library into the 21st century.

Except that they tried to do this by force. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the publishing industry, but Google basically planned from the start to infringe on the copyright of almost every author/publisher with a book in the library and then negotiate forgiveness (in the form of an exclusive contract) later.

We need to be more skeptical and hold Google accountable for the considerable power they now possess.

Remember a decade ago when clueless users thought AOL was the Internet? Although it won't surprise me, I'm hoping that we never get to the point where people think Google is the Internet.

Bell Labs was AT&T allowing a very, very small percentage of their workforce to do whatever interested them five days out of five. Google allows almost all their workforce to pursue pet projects 1 day out of 5. AT&T did this with the benefit of a protected monopoly, I might add.

There is obviously a missing knowledge of human behavior here. People have an expectation of some level of privacy that is related to being modest (ie. clothing). When this is violated, a sense of mistrust ensues and this is what will harm Google if they are not careful.

If I am planning on running for an elected office, or just on getting along with my neighbors I might not want the world to know I frequent atheist and rational humanism websites. This is not a joke. People get harassed for not believing the "right" thing.

By google's reasoning, abortion doctor's shouldn't have any privacy and those people trying to post all their private information online (and we know exactly why they do that) should be allowed to do so. After all, if you're not a criminal, why do you care about privacy? It's not like anyone is going to murder you or anything. Oh... right.

And hey, while we're at it, let's post all the information about children who are adopted, molested, beaten, and abused. And let's post all the information about every rape victim. After all, if a rape victim isn't a criminal, why is she so concerned with privacy?

This extends to limitless examples and what it really comes down to is "because it's MY fucking information". So fuck them.

Then again, Google is the company that not only allows that "rip off report" guy's website to be indexed, but actually PROMOTES his extortion scam to the top of most search results (while most other search engines squelch or even remove the results entirely). The level to which google truly doesn't give a fuck about its customers is astounding.

Google and privacy. You might want to check out this [cnet.com], this [uneasysilence.com], this [gcn.com], or this [google-watch.org]. People also forget that the majority of the world population is not living in the USA. US agencies are allowed to spy on non-US citizens as they like, although this is usually not emphasized for diplomatic reasons. Thus, not only terrorists and wrongdoers should be concerned about their privacy...unless Schmidt thinks that all non-US citizens are terrorists. Foreign governments should actually be much more concerned about Google than they seem to be, but as far as I know only former French president Chirac was concerned about Google and as a politician he turned out to be a wrongdoer [odt.co.nz], of course. LOL

You can make scroogle [scroogle.org] your search engine of choice although we all know that it helps less than some people might expect, because normally configured browsers leak a lot of information.

The problem I have with this sort of stuff is look at Tiger Woods, even President Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc...

People without skeletons in their closet are extremely rare. Nearly everybody has something to hide, if not from criminal matters, from embarrassing personal matters.

Then again, yeah, if you lack even those personal embarrassments, you really do have nothing to fear. But then, most people who make these statements DO have skeletons in their personal closets, and sometimes their own laws catch them

Every time I hear the "Well, if you have nothing to hide..." canard, I want to scream. I have everything to hide -- my LIFE. To me, it doesn't matter if my life is perfect, "normal," and utterly free of sin, excess, and debauchery -- it's still MY life, and no one else's business. I am currently (AFAIK) committing no crimes or acts of moral turpitude, yet that still doesn't mean I want my conversations, my financial transactions, my e-mail and browsing history, the books I read or music I listen to, etc. open to scrutiny, public, private, or governmental. It's still MY life, and my personal business, and I'll be damned if you or anyone else have a right to poke into it without my expressed consent.

Then we get a voice over and a cutaway. Then the snippet in question is suspiciously selected with nothing preceding it. That's his direct quote and it was stupid to say 'maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place' but what was said before it seems to be edited. If the context is search engines (which I think it is), then what he says is true. As in 'if you're looking for ways to murder your husband, maybe you shouldn't be using the Google Search engine to find that information in the first place.' Here's what follows the inflammatory statement:

But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines--including Google--do retain this information for some time... um... and it's important--for example that we are all subject to the United States Patriot Act--it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.

I don't want to sound like a fanboy bending over backwards to absolve Schmidt but I want to point out that the important message people should take away from this is simply that your searches are not private. Your searches leave the premises of your private property. They go to a semi-public resting place where--under the Patriot Act--the government has the ability to access them with little commotion.

I mean, if you enjoy doing something illegal like smoking weed, don't do it in public. You shouldn't be doing it in public in the first place. Do it in the privacy of your own home. If you go to a cafe or place of business and smoke weed, the owner and workers at that cafe might be obligated to call the authorities. Similarly if you're buying weed, don't use the Google search engine to do it.

To be fair, doesn't that fundamentally have more to do with the Chinese government than it does Google? I'm sure there are those who feel that Google should be willing to "stand up" to the Chinese Government, but when you boil it down to the basics, there is nothing obliging Google as a company to engage in this fight.

By the way, before you flame me into oblivion, I am a supporter of a free Tibet, and would love nothing more than to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama returned to his rightful place in Tibet.

'I'm sure there are those who feel that Google should be willing to "stand up" to the Chinese Government, but when you boil it down to the basics, there is nothing obliging Google as a company to engage in this fight.'

I wonder why Google doesn't disclose the search terms they do censor in China? Perhaps they 'don't want anyone to know' because they 'shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'...

I wonder why Google doesn't disclose the search terms they do censor in China? Perhaps they 'don't want anyone to know' because they 'shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'...

Or perhaps, they've been told by the Chinese Government that a condition of them being provided access to internet users in their country is that they censor various searches, and not disclose that information to the public. While I personally disagree with any form of government censorship, I can at least separate out Google's desire to do business from some implied moral obligation they ought to feel. I'm not saying it's savory, but it's really not any more incendiary than many, many other businesses.

A lot of us buy clothing or other items that are made in China, complete with all of the horrible working conditions that the people are exposed to, but we don't feel that Nike, Wal-Mart, Fruit-of-the-Loom, or whoever else should "stand up" to the Chinese Government, so why should Google be any different? I'm not saying it's right, but it's hardly unique.

Or perhaps, they've been told by the Chinese Government that a condition of them being provided access to internet users in their country is that they censor various searches, and not disclose that information to the public.

Well, sorry, but that's not the game we're playing. The mantra that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear does not often come with the rider "unless you have good reasons for keeping it secret, in which case that's OK and we'll let you off".

People like Google's Schmidt (if his statements are faithfully reported here, which seems to be in dispute) and Sun Chairman Scott "Privacy is dead; deal with it" McNealy don't give a damn about anyone else's privacy when it serves their business interests to view the world in black and white. For them to argue that it's OK to do something the public would disapprove of, because someone or something or some rule made it the only practical way to run their business, would be hypocrisy.

To be fair, doesn't that fundamentally have more to do with the Chinese government than it does Google? I'm sure there are those who feel that Google should be willing to "stand up" to the Chinese Government, but when you boil it down to the basics, there is nothing obliging Google as a company to engage in this fight.

You're absolutely correct, nothing obliges Google from making money... even if it help someone else do evil. Sort of like all those people who supported the Nazis so they continue doing business with Germany prior to the US entry into WWII.

Yea someone can yell Godwin's Law, but in this case I see a eary similarity between US interests prior to the US entry into WWII and Google's dealings with China. Placing money before principles, and trying to absolve themselves by saying we're only doing what is required to do business with China.

There is no law in any jurisdiction with which I am familiar that requires corporate entities of any type to maximise the money made for shareholders no matter what acts may be necessary to do so. Indeed, there are companies who make a point of being ethical in some sense, and this is typically part of the attraction of those companies to their shareholders, employees and clients/customers alike. And of course it is by definition illegal for companies to increase the profit they make by bre

The article linked offers a refutation of this interpretation, which I am not competent to support or argue with. I ran across this meme first while reading the book version of The Corporation [wikipedia.org], which may have helped spread it lately.

You're absolutely correct, nothing obliges Google from making money... even if it help someone else do evil.

The flip side of this is that, if Google didn't censor searches, they'd be prohibited from being there at all. You can say that they should take a moral stand, but why is refusing to do business in China better than doing limited business, in this case? It's not like some other engine would spring up in Google's place that will allow these searches to work, so Google's presence doesn't leave the Chinese everyman any worse off than if they were absent, and in fact their presence makes it better in some wa

It's not like some other engine would spring up in Google's place that will allow these searches to work, so Google's presence doesn't leave the Chinese everyman any worse off than if they were absent, and in fact their presence makes it better in some ways. Given that, I can't agree that it directly parallels giving actual money to finance Hitler's rise to power.

I've been hearing that line of reason since Nixon visited China. We can change China from within.

Yes, it is bad for American (and European) interests. However, for the Chinese people, it's good. They are moving from poverty to middle class. The Government is loosening its grip (slowly) and the people are (slowly) gaining freedoms. One could argue that not supporting China in its slow revolution is more "Evil" than supporting it.

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf's maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bou

There is a time to fight and a time let it be. If Google didn't agree to the terms it would not have operated in China, leaving the Chinese citizens with less exposure to the outside world. It is not evil, it is following the rules and trying to provide the most good legally possible. The legal system is evil not google.

The whole concept smacks of intellectual tyranny. The problem as I see it is one of oversight. I don't see electronic paper as any more public than the contents of your briefcase. For some reason government and just about everyone else seems to think that your electronic communications are free game. Why? They need a warrant to tap your phone and tampering with snail mail is a federal crime.

If a government agency wants to look at what you're doing, they should need a search warrant issued by a judge under clearly devised rules of evidence.

You are a moron. Google Search logging the queries is not the problem. Google Analytics is. If I query Google it really isn't that surprising that they know what I am searching for. But they really shouldn't know every single time I visit Slashdot, without even using Google to get there.

And here again the problem is not that I can't protect me against that. I can. The problem is that the vast majority of web users doesn't even know about it.

But they really shouldn't know every single time I visit Slashdot, without even using Google to get there.

The responsibility is shared. Slashdot starts your problem by serving you a page that advises you to talk to Google. Then you obey that suggestion. Then Google receives the information that you send them. Google bears some responsibility, but they are third in line.

Agreed, IF they are going to edit it to sell hits on their site then it's not news it's crap. Let's hope that someone releases an unedited transcript - Google perhaps? If this guy truly said something so stupid then providing the context to prove it shouldn't be a big deal right? And if in the end he was really that stupid then I think it should be everyone's sworn duty to crawl through any and all information he may have left laying around with a microscope and plaster it in bold headlines all over the place - just to prove a point about privacy:-)

I mean, if you enjoy doing something illegal like smoking weed, don't do it in public. You shouldn't be doing it in public in the first place. Do it in the privacy of your own home. If you go to a cafe or place of business and smoke weed, the owner and workers at that cafe might be obligated to call the authorities. Similarly if you're buying weed, don't use the Google search engine to do it.

This is an excellent example. If you're buying weed, don't use Google to do it. However, if you're Googling how to buy weed, that doesn't imply that you have, or will, and that's where things like this worry me. I might Google how to buy weed because I want to know how my kids might try to do it, so I can prevent it. I'm reminded of those high profile murder cases (Caylee Anthony springs to mind) where the suspect's computer is searched and they find they searched for something suggestive of the crime. We hear about that. We don't hear that 5,000,000 other people performed that same web search during that period of time, and given that 5,000,000 people didn't turn up dead soon after, we can assume they didn't go off and kill someone.

The problem with invasions of privacy like this isn't so much the release of fact. Ok, so you googled BDSM, to borrow someone else's example. Googling BDSM is relatively innocuous. Oh, but now we're going to assume you are interested in BDSM, or maybe that you participate in it, and that you're a bad person. Dangerous. Not to be trusted around kids and small animals. Shouldn't have a job that exposes you to anyone you might abuse, and in fact, since you have such a job, you should be fired. The problem is the inappropriate leaps from fact to wild, mostly baseless speculation. We can't keep people from making those leaps. We can keep them out of what should be our private affairs.

I completely agree with your point about context being very important, but there are many legal things people may search for which they still might not want to be public knowledge.

Suppose you did some searches on atheism, then non-believers were the target of the next witch hunt?

How about looking for information about an STD that you've contracted. Do you want everyone to know about that?

What about questionably illegal activities? Suppose you and your wife decide to try anal sex and search for some advice on avoiding problems. What if you live in a state (not sure there still are any) where that is illegal?

Are they going for illegal? Immoral? Unethical? Embarrassing? This list is neither all inclusive or all exclusive.

Marijuana is illegal in many places but not immoral, possibly unethical depending on your profession, and may or may not be embarrassing.

Adultery is immoral, usually unethical and embarrassing, but is perfectly legal.

Prostitution may or may not be legal, may or may not be immoral, may or may not be unethical, may or may not be embarrassing

Is this only with Google? I'd expect "Be Evil(TM)" Microsoft to act like this, even if they said they weren't. Is there a search engine that won't reveal your secrets? If there is, that's where you should go for secret searching.

I second this motion. The problem isn't that google knows you're doing it; if the US Gov't wants to know what you're doing online, they will know. The problem is that certain things which don't hurt anyone are illegal. The solution has nothing to do with google, unless perhaps they're harming people's attempts at advocacy. Given how trivial it is to find illegal information with google, that just doesn't wash.

In the mean time, don't put incriminating evidence online. It doesn't matter if google has it, or y

I think it's really simple, for example even though I consider my bank account balance private there's probably quite a few people at the bank that at least theoretically could look at it. If I use Google apps to write a letter I consider private, it's in much the same situation. And yet, most letters I write are significantly less important or private than my bank accounts. "I can't put my letters on Google, or people would see what I write" is a bit like "I can't put my money in the bank, or people would see how much money I have". Many companies live that way too having outsourced all their basic IT, for the most part this works fine. I can see how Google doesn't provide total anonymity or privacy yet good enough for many people and those remaining people it isn't possible for Google to serve.

If you want total privacy and anonymity, you can't rely on anyone else. You have to do it all on your own computer, use anonymous networks, connect directly with your peers and not over backbones like email or facebook or skype, in short it's a whole different game. And if you're really paranoid about it, you probably want to encrypt and physically secure and make tempest-proof and screened software and... the list really goes on and on, and it doesn't stop until your computer is as secure as the deepest vault at the Pentagon. Google apps isn't the place for Top Secret documents and if that's your standard then neither it is for you.

It's all a matter of using it with reason. If you're using a google web app to edit pictures before putting them on your facebook or myspace or photo sharing site, what have you lost? Nothing. You were going to put them online at the mercy of a company and their privacy policy anyway. Which may or may not be a good idea in the first place, but at least it's fairly consistent.

Nearly everyone in here broke the speed limit on their way to work, has pornography that is considered illegal in some states, software that is being used outside of its licensing terms, used drugs that are illegal somewhere in the world, music or movies that violate copyright law, and probably had sex in a way that is illegal in many states and cities. Not to mention the fact that you will be hard-pressed to find someone who does not have opinions they have expressed that could be used to incriminate them of something in the wrong context, or that some people who want to be political power consider to be illegal.

Laws are arbitrary rules written by those in charge. Rules that can change, rules that can be enforced capriciously and inconsistently. YOU PERSONALLY have done something illegal in that last year, and probably several things that a large number of people would like to make illegal. Lawyers and judges study the law for years, and even they only know a small subset of what actually is legal and illegal in any given area.

It's a trite maxim, but it's true. Here's a great video from a lawyer and a cop about why the right against to self-incrimination and privacy is so important even to people who don't think they have anything to hide. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik [youtube.com]

There are tons of comments like this: how can you not realize that you prove his point?

Since he does not want those details online he does not put them online. Because, I have to tell you, if you put something online, then it may happen that it goes online.

If you send information on the wire it's leaving your home, like your mail. And like your mail and your phone line it is protected, but only to some extent. Even your credit card transaction logs may be examined by the cops if they are relevant in a crim

'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'

Or perhaps if I have something that I don't want anyone to know, it's NONE OF THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS! I'm tired of this presumption of guilt that's become all the rage these days. We really need to get these idiots out of positions of power.

This is the reason that people who want help with social ills are afraid to seek help. A guy who has a problem with drugs or alcohol or a less-than-ideal medical issue are afraid, at the very least, of the stigma of what will be associated with them if they come out to find proper help. It would be nice to think that the internet could be a place for these people to take a first step towards recovery but even those who supposedly do no evil aren't willing to give these people a bit of wiggle room to find themselves the kinds of assistance that they need.

Drugs and alcohol are easy to find treatment for. Try finding a sympathetic ear if your struggling with child pornography, or worse, contemplating molesting a child; but would like to seek help because you know its wrong. There is plenty of help for the victims of abuse, but no help for would be abusers looking for someone to help them stop. All that you will find for those people is a crowd waiting to stone them or put them in jail for life.

It's an obvious fallacy. The old "You have nothing to worry about if you're doing nothing wrong" argument rests on a belief in perfect justice. You'll only be punished for things which you shouldn't be doing. However, history is riddled with examples of people doing and being things for which they should not be punished, but are. Like black, gay, catholic and/or protestant in Northern Ireland, Jewish, a journalist anywhere the state doesn't want its secrets told, etc. It assumes punishments fit the crimes, which in many cases they obviously don't, like becoming a registered sex offender for peeing on a tree in a world where you can kill someone without becoming a registered murderer. You have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything anyone in the world considers wrong.

News flash: You -are- doing something someone in the world considers wrong.

There are lots of things which are perfectly legal yet something one would prefer to keep private.

My favorite example is a primary school teacher who happens to like BDSM sex. People who are into this adhere to the Safe, sane and consensual [wikipedia.org] principle. (Note: NSFW image in Wikipedia article.) In short, whatever happens happens between consenting adults.

Yet I'd wager that given the average primary school class at least one of the parents will throw a fit if they find the kids' teacher is "a sick pervert".

So no, it's not as simple as simply abstaining from anything you wouldn't like other people to know. This is an extreme example, but I'm sure other people can come up with more subtle ones if need be.

Don't need to go that far.
I'm sure in lot of places, being gay, having the wrong faith, vote for the wrong party, read the wrong book,... would label you a "sick pervert".

Anyway under the same assumptions, why should voting be kept private ? After all you have nothing to hide - and there is really nothing you would do in the voting booth that could be considered illegal...

There are lots of things which are perfectly legal yet something one would prefer to keep private.

If you're after an example that is perhaps more rhetorically useful (and safe for work), try the fact that Google requires all its staff to sign confidentiality clauses in their contracts and has NDAs with its partners, not just about inventions but also about business plans -- does that mean that Google's business is something that it shouldn't be doing, or is Eric planning on striking all those confidentiality contracts?

"If you've got nothing to hide" is a tool of tyranny. I thought it was well and truly debunked, and yet it seems it just won't flush away.

Individual privacy doesn't need a reason. The goal of privacy is privacy.

If you're going to search for something that you don't want google spunking up 5 years later, to your post democratic, tyrant overlords, you better start taking precautions.This is a start. https://ssl.scroogle.org/ [scroogle.org]

Stupid or not, one can think of it as a Freudian slip, or maybe his 'Tiger moment'. Google clearly has inflated its corporate ego to Galactic size. They assume (with some justification at the moment) that they can do as they please because they are too big, smart, and rich to have to worry about repercussions. So now they even baldly state where they are coming from, because they think it doesn't matter.

Google is just a victim of laws that we as citizens let eat away at our privacy. Google cant withold information that the governments asks for if it doesnt have any support in law.

Its also easy to forget that Google is just one player, ask yourself what other information is readily avaliable except internet logs? Utilities, water, credit receipts, health records, travels etc etc. Even if you could be 100% anonymous on the internet your private life is still non existent.

The problem is that privacy has been abolished everywhere and people just dont seem to care about it. History repeats itself, again and again...

Same false argument has been put forward to defend of CCTV.I prefer to shit in privacy, but it seems Eric Schmidt doesn't.

He should read this article.

Solove, Daniel J., 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, 2007; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=998565 [ssrn.com]

I have long suspected that you and your company were, in fact, completely evil and not deserving of the hype surrounding you, nor the trust placed in you. I will now no longer be using my Gmail account, which I have had for years. The few things which are still sent there regularly, I will be changing to send to another address on my personal mail server. I will continue not responding to Voice and Wave invites. I will no longer be logging into Google for search results, nor will be accepting cookies from you, and as soon as I can find a reasonable search engine to replace you, I will not be coming back.

Maybe Mr. Schmidt would do well to remember the time he complained in the media about the fact that a lot of his personal details, including his address, etc - were found in Google search. Apparently he was doing something wrong, and had devious plan - I mean, if we listen to Mr. Schmidt, his apparent concerns at the time were enough to justify many articles in the mainstream press....Hashe been investigated yet?

Maybe Mr. Schmidt shouldn't be the CEO of a company that deals with so much personal information if he doesn't understand the need for privacy and how important it is to most people.

The argument he makes is the weakest argument people who advocate destroying personal privacy can make - and one of the worst things about it, and something they never seem to consider is that it is a COMPLETELY UNAMERICAN argument, and the reason I say this is because it assumes that the authorities (government) are completely infalliable and should be trusted. One of the main premises of the way our system is supposed to work is checks and balances, they point of which is that we aren't supposed to trust authorities, this is WHY we have checks and balances....and corporations - please.

The argument he makes is the weakest argument people who advocate destroying personal privacy can make - and one of the worst things about it, and something they never seem to consider is that it is a COMPLETELY UNAMERICAN argument

I think it's also rather undanish, ungerman, unnorwegian, probably very unswedish, not particularly finnish either, etc.

True, Google is seated in Mountain View, CA, in the US. But it operates elsewhere, and will probably need to respect local laws in ${not the USA}.

'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't live in a judgmental society which bases its morality on a code of ethics that has been outdated for about 4,000 years now and is purposely designed to make you feel bad for being human.'

There, I said it. Our society looks down upon individuals for engaging in such a wide swath of behaviors that you either have to avoid living your life to the fullest, or keep some things to yourself if you want to be a productive member of society. Hopefully we can get to the point where people learn to mind their own business about such things, but until then, we all have a damn good reason to want some privacy.

This is about the third or fourth time I have posted this on Slashdot. I'm glad I copied the text of the post when I saw it. Please note, the text is not mine. I just found it brilliant, that's all.

"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"

"If the're not guilty, why are they running?"

I wrote about this a while ago. Here's the text:

"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.

And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters:"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said:"If the're not guilty, why are they running?"

Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.

But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.

They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.

That statement is exactly in line with the ugly police state mentality that asks, "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?" The answer is that as a responsible, law-abiding adult in a free society, you have the RIGHT to go about your lawful business and live your life without interference from either the government or other citizens.

There are many, many things some people within a free society might disapprove of, and they might very well have the opportunity to affect your life. Try getting hired at a company full of true believers if you happen to be an atheist...and they know it. Or watch what happens to your kids if your standards of acceptable behaviour (though legal) aren't the community norm.

If that's what Eric Schmidt actually believes, he's a crypto-fascist, and we'd better start keeping a very close eye on Google.

Doing anything new or innovative.Taking pride in my work.Discussing trade secrets with colleagues.Discussing competitive business strategies.Uisg any word that could be misunderstood my someone as something illegal.

A few years ago, I was at a bar with a client. He had observed in his web-site logs that many of his visitors arrive from searches for "child pornography". My client is a comedian, and one of his blogs used the words within a joke. Suddenly, some drunken idiot from across the bar stumbled over with the intent of physically brutalizing us -- having overheard two words out of two hundred. Needless to say, drunken stumbling idiots aren't difficult to subdue.

We've all heard the stories of people walking out of Federal Research Laboratories with paperwork and thumb drives full of information such as Jessican Quintana [blogspot.com]. While stealing nuclear secrets might be a bit harder to use/sell than say 10million email addresses plus associated personal information. I'd be a bit more concerned about some angry employee grabbing a tape (which I doubt they back much up to tape) or just copying off some data onto a thumb drive and walking out the door.

This might not be so hard under their "20% personal projects plan"...

"Hey boss, I've got an idea for a personal project.. I'd like to create a google map that maps someone and all of their friend's email addresses on it! Kind of like overlaying their email address next to their home address and phone number. I just need access to that personal data."

While the CEO can say all sorts of stuff about privacy, there's nothing stopping some kid who makes 1000x less than the CEO and will never become a millionaire from walking out the door with this information and becoming a millionaire that way. If you don't want people to know a secret, don't tell them. Google shouldn't be allowed to collect this stuff anyhow, that way it can't leak out to begin with.

There are about 22,000 Google AdWords customers known to us. Every time Google puts up an AdWords ad, it exposes the identity of the advertiser. Our AdRater [mozilla.org] browser plug-in rates on-line advertisers as their ads are presented to users. Unlike most plug-ins, we don't monitor user behavior. Instead, we monitor advertiser behavior, which is in some ways more interesting.
This doesn't violate Google's terms of service. Every request made of Google was made by a user, not us, during ordinary browsing. We're just watching the ads go by. It's like clipping ads from newspapers to see what your competitors are doing.

As we point out occasionally [sitetruth.net], about 35% of Google's advertisers are "bottom feeders". Google needs to raise the bar on who can run ads with them. Search Google for "Craigslist auto posting tool" and look at the paid ads. You can buy "Easy Ad Poster Deluxe", a program for spamming Craigslist, through Google Checkout [google.com], so Google isn't just advertising it, they're taking a cut of the revenue as well. That's embarrassing for Google, or should be.

People have generally described this as a big misstep on Schmidt's part. Maybe it is, but only in that he revealed a bit more of Google's attitude than they normally do.

Google has been prancing around for years saying, "oh, don't worry about our data collection. We're the GOOD guys! We even have a motto that says don't be evil, and in fact we're so good that it's not even official." In the meantime, they've been behaving just like any other smart corporation in a sensitive monopoly position. It amazes me that nobody in the media and damned few people in the industry seem to care about what they're doing, just that they've said "don't be evil" and so everything is OK.

So either Schmidt has revealed more than he meant to (which would be a misstep), or he realises that they are so powerful that they don't have to pretend anymore. You can be sure, however, that he did NOT misrepresent Google or its values.

Microsoft is out to get your money. They do this by selling you as many Microsoft products as they can(sometimes whether you want them or not) and occaisionally knifing a competitor. Not exactly perfect behaviour, but predictable and relatively harmless. Microsoft doesn't really care what you do with their products so long as you pay for them. Want to write political manifestos in Word, Microsoft doesn't care. Features of Word may make your document easier to tie b

MS collects the same info via bing, msn, and even from Windows. To say that Google is worse is like saying that W was worse than Hitler or Stalin. He had actions SIMILAR to them, but nothing was over what any of them did. Likewise, Google has not been shown to have done anything worse. Yet.

However, I DO now think that with that statement, that Google SHOULD be looked at a big closer.

Google is evil--they're a publicly traded corporation, dedicated to the stockholders and the executives. They have been quietly taking over the internet. They don't care about your privacy, they don't care about technology, they care about MONEY, and how to get more of it. That's all. This is old news, but they were smart enough to lean heavily on their "don't be evil" image to avoid being recognised for their actual behaviour.